Nick of Time
Hello World,
Happy days are here again! By that I mean, right at this very moment, there are any number of days that we can be happy about, possibly even more than you might be aware of. For many Christians, this is Holy Week, with yesterday being Maundy Thursday and today is Good Friday, which means that Sunday will be Easter. Yesterday was also the first day of Passover, which often finds itself in the vicinity of Easter, and this year, nearer than most. Speaking of nearer, for our Orthodox friends, this will be Palm Sunday, and Orthodox Easter will be April 19, which is also closer to the regular or non-Orthodox Easter than it often is. So right there, we have plenty of eventful days full of celebrations and observances, to suit the joyful or the somber equally among us. But that's not all, not by a long shot. Although the college basketball madness begins in the month which bears its name, it's April that sees the Final Four whittled down to the eventual winner, as March Madness winds up at last, about a week too late to be chronologically accurate, but just as popular with its fans for all that. Hard on its heels is American Circus Day on April 3rd, which honors America's first circus in 1793, and I suppose we've had clowns going into politics ever since. Meanwhile, all over the country, major league baseball returned for a new season, with Opening Day in cities from coast to coast beginning on April 5, and after a long cold winter, that is a day to celebrate indeed. And then earlier this week on April 6th, those of us who are mad for plaid could enjoy a Happy Tartan Day, commemorating the signing of the Scottish Declaration of Independence on this date in 1320. Whew! That's a lot to cram into a short period of time, and a person would have to step lively to get in all of their palms, kugel, hoops, kilts, fish sticks, fast balls, bunnies and trapezes, not to mention, maundies, whatever they are, but please make mine chocolate.
In the local area, hysteria gripped the New York sports scene when the Yankees lost their first two games, sending their beleaguered fans into paroxysms of wailing and gnashing of teeth. This cataclysmic disaster dwarfed all other events that might have been happening at the same time, and basically the entire media ground to a halt in response to the calamity. Luckily, humanity was saved when they won their third game, although they were reduced to relying on something called Nick Swisher, a journeyman infielder who sounds like a shady character from a Charles Dickens novel. Personally, I wasn't worried about the Yankees, figuring that two games was way too early for panic, but I understood how they felt on April 8, when suddenly the sky was nothing but a mad swirling expanse of snowflakes, all looking like they meant business. The way things had been going this winter, and in other localities even worse, just about the last thing any of us wanted to see in April was more snow. Fortunately, it turned out to be flurries that didn't do much damage, and in fact, later that same day, we heard the unmistakable sounds of the ice cream truck making its rounds in the hospital neighborhood. So things seemed to return to normal for the most part, but as for myself, I thought that was a little too close for comfort.
Of course, last week was Palm Sunday, and if there is anything more popular with cats, I don't know it. In fact, just having fresh palms in the house was enough to draw the most reclusive of our invisible cats, Captain Midnight his own invisible self, out from under the kitchen cabinets, and into the living room to play with them. It's a wonder to me that they don't sell them in pet stores year round, or make cat toys out of them, because I've yet to meet the cat who can resist them. You can't help but get the feeling that all of the designers of cat toys are Moslem terrorists, because they've obviously never brought home palms from church and found out what the rest of us with cats already know. If he wasn't already the savior of the local pinstripe franchise, I'm thinking that Hartz could hire Nick Swisher away from the Yankees to be the spokesperson for their new Swisher Palms, guaranteed to get your kitty to do the twist. Oliver Twist, that is, although Artful Dodger might be a more apt description for the Dickensian appeal of the product..
Speaking of Nick, in my previous note I explained how the government should recruit the volunteer sidewalk Santa's in March and October to go to everyone's house and change the time on their devices to account for Daylight Saving Time, which would certainly save time for me, if nothing else. We can count on Bill to come up with an even better idea:
===============================
I think we should let the REAL Santa Claus reset the clocks. As you said, he's not doing anything for the rest of the year, and he has several advantages over the Sidewalk Santas. For one thing, he's not recovering from some debilitating addiction, so he's probably a tad more reliable. Heck, we ALREADY let him in the house and he's never stolen anything (that I know of). And, having come to the house for all these years, he could probably FIND all the clocks. Not to mention that he's used to doing even MORE complicated things (like assembling bicycles) at 2 in the morning.
===============================
Well, I don't see any way to improve upon that, try as I might. After all, we already call him St. Nick, so he could be the St. Nick of Time. (Oof!) Speaking of improvements, I just realized after living here all of these years, we finally have forsythia in our yard, and a welcome sight they are indeed. We had new neighbors move in a couple of years ago, and they decided to install a sort of decorative latticed fence-like apparatus along part of their driveway on top of the rock wall. I noticed today that they had it placed in such a way that it separates their forsythia from their yard, with the result that the forsythia is now in our yard instead, on the opposite side of the fence. To my way of thinking, that makes it our forsythia at this point, and we're just as glad to have it. Personally, I think the bright yellow flowers will look quite charming against the white lattice background, and when people compliment me on my brilliant landscaping arrangements, you can be sure that I will say, "Thank you" and leave it at that, while giving no credit whatsoever to the neighbors for the fence, the flowers or even the rock wall, all of which are technically theirs. This is what I call the Artful Dodger method of garden acquisitions.
While we're on the topic of acquisitiveness, we have our friends at http://paultan.org (and please feel free to go visit their web site and see for yourself) to thank for the following:
================================
The Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupe goes on sale officially in the Middle East today, a place where all the oil-rich need something new as an outlet to spend their money anyway. Unlike the Phantom Drop-head Coupe that allows you to drive with the top down to watch the clear starry night, owners of the Phantom Coupe have to make do with a funky "starlight headliner" which illuminates the ceiling of the car with more than 1,600 fiber optics to give the impression of a star-filled sky.
================================
Here is normally the part where I would say, "This is why the terrorists hate us," but it appears that it's the terrorists who are buying these cars in the first place. It certainly does seem as if the world has been turned upside down, with the desperate Yankees being rescued by Charles Dickens, migrating forsythia, snow in April, and Santa Claus in March. Talk about March Madness! The way things are going, you just don't know what to expect next, but to be on the safe side, I wouldn't rule out marshmallow peeps, dandelions, income taxes, weather, clowns in politics, more holidays, ice cream and stars, real or otherwise. Of course, we've already had the wailing and gnashing of teeth, so we can't rule out the possibility of further Biblical plagues being visited upon the area, so if it starts raining frogs or hordes of locusts, don't say I didn't warn you. I can't claim to be the Spirit of Easter Future, but I do the best I can with what I've got, or my name isn't -
Miss Havisham
Happy days are here again! By that I mean, right at this very moment, there are any number of days that we can be happy about, possibly even more than you might be aware of. For many Christians, this is Holy Week, with yesterday being Maundy Thursday and today is Good Friday, which means that Sunday will be Easter. Yesterday was also the first day of Passover, which often finds itself in the vicinity of Easter, and this year, nearer than most. Speaking of nearer, for our Orthodox friends, this will be Palm Sunday, and Orthodox Easter will be April 19, which is also closer to the regular or non-Orthodox Easter than it often is. So right there, we have plenty of eventful days full of celebrations and observances, to suit the joyful or the somber equally among us. But that's not all, not by a long shot. Although the college basketball madness begins in the month which bears its name, it's April that sees the Final Four whittled down to the eventual winner, as March Madness winds up at last, about a week too late to be chronologically accurate, but just as popular with its fans for all that. Hard on its heels is American Circus Day on April 3rd, which honors America's first circus in 1793, and I suppose we've had clowns going into politics ever since. Meanwhile, all over the country, major league baseball returned for a new season, with Opening Day in cities from coast to coast beginning on April 5, and after a long cold winter, that is a day to celebrate indeed. And then earlier this week on April 6th, those of us who are mad for plaid could enjoy a Happy Tartan Day, commemorating the signing of the Scottish Declaration of Independence on this date in 1320. Whew! That's a lot to cram into a short period of time, and a person would have to step lively to get in all of their palms, kugel, hoops, kilts, fish sticks, fast balls, bunnies and trapezes, not to mention, maundies, whatever they are, but please make mine chocolate.
In the local area, hysteria gripped the New York sports scene when the Yankees lost their first two games, sending their beleaguered fans into paroxysms of wailing and gnashing of teeth. This cataclysmic disaster dwarfed all other events that might have been happening at the same time, and basically the entire media ground to a halt in response to the calamity. Luckily, humanity was saved when they won their third game, although they were reduced to relying on something called Nick Swisher, a journeyman infielder who sounds like a shady character from a Charles Dickens novel. Personally, I wasn't worried about the Yankees, figuring that two games was way too early for panic, but I understood how they felt on April 8, when suddenly the sky was nothing but a mad swirling expanse of snowflakes, all looking like they meant business. The way things had been going this winter, and in other localities even worse, just about the last thing any of us wanted to see in April was more snow. Fortunately, it turned out to be flurries that didn't do much damage, and in fact, later that same day, we heard the unmistakable sounds of the ice cream truck making its rounds in the hospital neighborhood. So things seemed to return to normal for the most part, but as for myself, I thought that was a little too close for comfort.
Of course, last week was Palm Sunday, and if there is anything more popular with cats, I don't know it. In fact, just having fresh palms in the house was enough to draw the most reclusive of our invisible cats, Captain Midnight his own invisible self, out from under the kitchen cabinets, and into the living room to play with them. It's a wonder to me that they don't sell them in pet stores year round, or make cat toys out of them, because I've yet to meet the cat who can resist them. You can't help but get the feeling that all of the designers of cat toys are Moslem terrorists, because they've obviously never brought home palms from church and found out what the rest of us with cats already know. If he wasn't already the savior of the local pinstripe franchise, I'm thinking that Hartz could hire Nick Swisher away from the Yankees to be the spokesperson for their new Swisher Palms, guaranteed to get your kitty to do the twist. Oliver Twist, that is, although Artful Dodger might be a more apt description for the Dickensian appeal of the product..
Speaking of Nick, in my previous note I explained how the government should recruit the volunteer sidewalk Santa's in March and October to go to everyone's house and change the time on their devices to account for Daylight Saving Time, which would certainly save time for me, if nothing else. We can count on Bill to come up with an even better idea:
===============================
I think we should let the REAL Santa Claus reset the clocks. As you said, he's not doing anything for the rest of the year, and he has several advantages over the Sidewalk Santas. For one thing, he's not recovering from some debilitating addiction, so he's probably a tad more reliable. Heck, we ALREADY let him in the house and he's never stolen anything (that I know of). And, having come to the house for all these years, he could probably FIND all the clocks. Not to mention that he's used to doing even MORE complicated things (like assembling bicycles) at 2 in the morning.
===============================
Well, I don't see any way to improve upon that, try as I might. After all, we already call him St. Nick, so he could be the St. Nick of Time. (Oof!) Speaking of improvements, I just realized after living here all of these years, we finally have forsythia in our yard, and a welcome sight they are indeed. We had new neighbors move in a couple of years ago, and they decided to install a sort of decorative latticed fence-like apparatus along part of their driveway on top of the rock wall. I noticed today that they had it placed in such a way that it separates their forsythia from their yard, with the result that the forsythia is now in our yard instead, on the opposite side of the fence. To my way of thinking, that makes it our forsythia at this point, and we're just as glad to have it. Personally, I think the bright yellow flowers will look quite charming against the white lattice background, and when people compliment me on my brilliant landscaping arrangements, you can be sure that I will say, "Thank you" and leave it at that, while giving no credit whatsoever to the neighbors for the fence, the flowers or even the rock wall, all of which are technically theirs. This is what I call the Artful Dodger method of garden acquisitions.
While we're on the topic of acquisitiveness, we have our friends at http://paultan.org (and please feel free to go visit their web site and see for yourself) to thank for the following:
================================
The Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupe goes on sale officially in the Middle East today, a place where all the oil-rich need something new as an outlet to spend their money anyway. Unlike the Phantom Drop-head Coupe that allows you to drive with the top down to watch the clear starry night, owners of the Phantom Coupe have to make do with a funky "starlight headliner" which illuminates the ceiling of the car with more than 1,600 fiber optics to give the impression of a star-filled sky.
================================
Here is normally the part where I would say, "This is why the terrorists hate us," but it appears that it's the terrorists who are buying these cars in the first place. It certainly does seem as if the world has been turned upside down, with the desperate Yankees being rescued by Charles Dickens, migrating forsythia, snow in April, and Santa Claus in March. Talk about March Madness! The way things are going, you just don't know what to expect next, but to be on the safe side, I wouldn't rule out marshmallow peeps, dandelions, income taxes, weather, clowns in politics, more holidays, ice cream and stars, real or otherwise. Of course, we've already had the wailing and gnashing of teeth, so we can't rule out the possibility of further Biblical plagues being visited upon the area, so if it starts raining frogs or hordes of locusts, don't say I didn't warn you. I can't claim to be the Spirit of Easter Future, but I do the best I can with what I've got, or my name isn't -
Miss Havisham
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 9:35 PM
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